Technology and Progress

Themes Technology and Progress Throughout the lines of this poem, McGinley weaves a historic perspective to show the progress of technology in war weaponry. She does this, always in a tongue-in-cheek manner, to point out that there have been, over the millennia, a progression that has gone awry. She does this in two different ways. First, she demonstrates that although there has been progress in the development of more intricate, more specialized, and more complex weaponry, it always ends up that the weapons do the same thing, kill. They don't necessarily kill better, because how does one do that? Then she subtly asks if the progress is in the numbers. But then, so what if the numbers have increased. What does that mean? And is that to be considered progress?

Second, the underlying message in the poem is whether this progress is a misuse of knowledge...